Tag Archive: save the world

Lately I've been hit with these philosophical fits that I just have to spill out onto the page. I carry around a small notebook with me to jot down thoughts when they happen. I've wanted to share them, but often don't because it's a lot of stream of consciousness and exploratory reasoning. Also, the subject matter is decidedly heavy. But here I am, spilling out a whole essay on some of my latest thoughts, and I suppose I'll consider it therapeutic just to have written and shared it. No worries if you don't make it through. I will likely be adding to this collection in the future. We'll see how it goes. I welcome healthy debate and constructive feedback, always. 🙂

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Early on in my adulthood I started learning all about the sad state of the earth and our species, and how far we've fallen away from what's natural and healthy.

The weather shifted so suddenly recently. From high 90s and thick air to cool breezy reaching-for-a-sweater weather. I am peeking out at my 50 tomato plants and wondering if we'll get as many as I thought we would… no matter, none will be wasted. A green tomato is lovely in its own right.

There’s this quote from A Language Older Than Words that has stuck with me, and I wanted to share it here.

"Part of our task as members of a community is to feed each other. I thought again of our fundamental inversion of all relatedness, of how we nearly always ask precisely the wrong question- What can I get from this?– and so very rarely the right one- What can I give back? Even when we try to learn from others, it is from this same spirit of acquisition: What can I learn from this forest ecosystem that will teach me how to manage it for maximum resource extraction? Rarely: What can I learn from this forest community that will teach me how to better serve it?… Continue Reading...

If there’s anything that you’ll hear me say about the process of natural birth, it’s that it is loaded with glimpses into the nature of life- the intimate and impermeable relationship between so many things, often things that we pretend are very separate from each other. Pain and pleasure, strength and surrender, instinct and intellect, spirit and body, etc. I’m always finding myself in situations where I’m grateful for my experience of giving birth, because it shows me how interconnected these concepts are. I think, were we to live in a more natural world, we’d have so many more experiences that teach us this very lesson. As it is, giving birth has been one of the only truly primal experiences of my life, and so I find myself referencing it often in my attempts at understanding other things.… Continue Reading...

No, no baby yet, although I do feel like it’s coming very soon… not due until Monday, although practically every phone call I’ve received today has started with a "So? What’s happening? Any baby?"… I’m fairly certain that this happens to practically every full-term pregnant woman, so I just roll my eyes and say "Yep! Forgot to tell you!" I should joke about how I birthed it hours ago while I was taking a bath and should probably go check on it… But then I smile because I know they are just as excited to meet this little one as we are. Except, you know, the eye roll is very necessary because I’m the one who has to push it out here! So I’m pretty sure I’ll let people know when I’ve gone ahead and done that… silly.… Continue Reading...

"We fear death. And not just the death that all experience, but another that scares us far more than the real death that comes at the end of our phony lives. This other death that we fear even more comes before the real death- sometimes long before- if it comes at all. This is the death of our socially constructed self. Once that self dies, then who will we be? We cannot face the possibility of actually living, of actually becoming who we really are and who we would be had we not been so violently deformed by this culture. We cannot face the possibility of being alive, of living, so we turn… to jet skis and off-road vehicles, to Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Magic Mountain, and Six Flags over Everywhere.… Continue Reading...

This is Vera’s new bear. She was totally stuck to it at the thrift store while I was looking for fabric scraps and stuff, and I couldn’t resist getting it for her- plus it was only a couple bucks. When I asked her the bear’s name, she told me it was "Tolly". I love the names she picks! (Other examples are Lee-lo, Chicken, Dani)

Over the past week I’ve been thinking about what to do for this day, and I just found myself in a cynical place. My youthful idealism has pretty much gone out the window when it comes to this kind of thing. Basically, I used to think that recycling and picking up trash and buying green and doing all these little things was going to make a difference, and now… I just know that it’s a lie that ironically helps to perpetuate the massive and relentless destruction of the planet. I’m a bright shining light, now aren’t I? But seriously, all the effort that people make on this day basically amounts to… not enough. Of course I’m not making the argument to throw up our hands and just toss trash out the window, but I do think that we need a dose of realism when it comes to this precious little holiday.… Continue Reading...

My last food post was about raw milk. I wrote that post in part to spread awareness about it, but also in part because it’s a food item that is currently in danger. In the past month there were several members of my raw milk cooperative that got sick. Some people tested positive for campylobacter. Immediately suspicion rose surrounding the fact that they were consumers of the raw milk, and the news just took off with it (despite the fact that there was also a contagious stomach virus going around). I was really unhappy with the amount of bad journalism that went along with this scandal- their headlines were all over the place and misleading, and it was just kind of a mess… What was so encouraging was the outpouring of comments that came from other raw milk drinkers/cooperative members that defended the local farm and got the papers to fix those headlines.… Continue Reading...